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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Hoping everyone had a wonderful and fulfilling Thanksgiving. Have been away from cyberspace celebrating with family so did not get to post the last of my cards of thankful blessings. So for the last hours of November here is a continuation of my last post. Layouts of my own these cards were given to special people in my family's life who we could not be with this Thanksgiving. I was running out of time to get them out so I used dies and embellishments from my stash. The last card was created to be a more masculine/grunge type card so why the sentiment looks ragged and why I used a muslin type paper behind the acorn dies.

Happy Holidays Everyone! Happy news --- I won my first card challenge over the weekend at CPS, CPS142! Thank you so much to everyone at CPS for choosing my card, 'Thankful', posted on November 21, 2009.

Seeing as how it is a busy holiday week for everyone, I have been busy finishing up some cards to get posted online for a few challenges and with the post office! The first one, A Pumpkin Thanksgiving, is a completely stamped and colored card save for the stamped sentiment, ribbon and brad embellishments.

It took me a while to finally decide what to do with this sketch for PPA 17. I had various ideas and finally wound up with this one. I am pretty satisfied with the final product. I used the color combination from this past week's challenge at Color Throwdown #69. However, as I said, it took me a bit to finally decide how I wanted to do it and so I missed the deadline to submit for CTD. I loved this color combo and will use it again sometime. CTD always has wonderful color combos!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

A time to be thankful! Thankful for time to make cards to send to family and friends. Thankful for the family and friends. A very simple sketch to bring out the warmth and gratitude of the season. I was 3/4 done with this card when I realized I didn't use any stamps! Both patterned papers are from K and Company on textured orange and plain brown cardstock. I had all of these little leaf embellishments and one thing led to another and they wound up as the feathers on the turkey. I found the cute metal alphabet stickers at Ollie's, a discount store here similar to Big Lots (only a lot more disheveled). Prices are great. I got a pack of those alphabet letters for $1.29. The pumpkins are a Sizzix die and I wrapped embroidery thread around them and the corners of the frame. The leaf buttons are another cute find at Jo Ann's, tied with the same thread and atop green grosgrain ribbon.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Tonight a fun card. A birthday card for a friend's son who loves space. My stash was limited on things 'spacey' except for stickers and a die print of the moon. The background I stamped with a star trio stamp and embossed with silver powder. I did the same to the edges of the card and moon die. The 'You Rock' sentiment was also embossed in black. The black ribbon is actually from a set of graduation ribbons from The Paper Company.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A round card for the Caardvarks Challenge. I've never made a round card before but this was really fun. I will definitely do it again. At first, I thought of doing a tiered snowman card that would fold up to a snowman face on the front of the card. I intend to still try that idea. My mind then naturally switched from a snowman to a snow globe. My intention was to actually apply a transparent cover and loose 'snow' to make it more like a real globe, but once the card part was finished, I felt adding the rest would detract from the picture. I am thinking I will still make a real globe card sometime in the near future, too. However, I like the way this card turned out as is. Oh, and I made it to open from the top to keep with the globe effect with a flat bottom.

Monday, November 16, 2009

The holidays are fast approaching and I have sooooo much to do! Making this card has put me more in the spirit of things and ready to go. Cards, cooking, painting, cards, cleaning, raking, cards, shopping, eating, cards! Is there a pattern progressing? After Ida blew through last week leaving us soggy and a blanket of leaves to clean up, playing with these colors and this card makes fall much more enjoyable. I loved the colors this week at Color Throwdown and just had to play. I mixed it up a bit and instead of colorful leaves, I made colorful fall flowers with a dash of leaves in the patterned paper behind the smaller flowers. I chose brown for the dark neutral because I loved the embossed pattern of it.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

A very simple and cute sketch from CPS this week. My first Christmas card for the season. I loved the Santa stamp and the little candy stamp. I used red and green cardstock and dotted patterned paper that I embossed and I used a rope border punch on the green cardstock. Embellishments included: green brads, red button, holly die and green ribbon and red pom pom ribbon. Ink was Versamark with Evergreen and Rich Red embossing powder. To bring out Santa's white beard and hat fur, I used Stampendous! Crystal Snow.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Finally I have finished this card! I thought this would be so easy with this week's Get Sketchy Challenge #13, but it proved much more challenging than I bargained. I did not do the bonus challenge of dry embossing, mostly because I do not currently have a light box.

I have had the dog stamps for a while and like my last post, I wanted to do a more masculine type card for my dad. I decided on a music theme along with the dogs. While creating the card, I happened upon a stamp set that just happened to have a drumset stamp just the size I needed. Karma! Maybe. Being new to stamping, it took me fiddling with everything several ways to finally come up with the finished product. I am very happy with it, thank goodness!

Monday, November 9, 2009

Ok, another hectic weekend.....indoor soccer, professional soccer on TV, beautiful weather to boot! There were too many things to do and not enough time. So here I am once again, scurrying to get my cards done for challenges I've chosen to do to push me to get the cards done in the first place! LOL! What a vicious circle! This card was a double challenge, Mojo111 sketch challenge and Color Throwdown #67, only I may have missed the first one. I had a little trouble getting all the colors together on this. Definitely a color challenge! I wanted to make a card for my uncle who is battling cancer and I thought the color challenge from CTD would be perfect for a masculine card. Didn't have any patterned paper in any of the right colors, so I embossed a few and stamped another. The stamp on the orange is actually a Celtic stamp but I felt it had a nice nautical feel to it. Originally I had tried a shell with the same stamp background but I felt it was too busy and took away from the sentiment I wanted to add to the shell. I had to compromise on the embellishments a bit. The shell die I had to cut myself from another die cut in my stash and then I embellished it with dry ink and then the sentiment. After doing it, I feel like I shouldl have added some glitter of more 'umph' to it, but I do like the card. And, now after publishing and looking at the card again, the shell reminds me totally of a crescent roll! Don't know what is up with my card elements reminding me of food. So bizarre.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Some simple quick cards tonight. My mom is a Queen Redhatter and so I made these for her to give her members on birthays. Even though it is the Red Hat club, for a birthday, purple hats are worn. I haven't been able to find a hat stamp to my liking so I created a template for die cut hats.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

A thank you card of sorts in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month and the PPA 14 In the Pink Challenge to use pink in a card. The sketch is from the Midnight Madness Sketch, MMSC25. Pink is one of my favorite colors so I could NOT do a pink challenge! And, it didn't take me long to get it all to come together. After I got it all together and in my lightbox, those brown embossed circles remind me a lot of Oreos. LOL!

Boo To You!

My last two Halloween cards for the season. I ran out of time to make all the Halloween cards I wanted to make so I have had to file my ideas away for next year. These are simple creations of my own, no challenge inspired.